Few thinkers have had as much influenceon the social sciences as the German social
theorist Karl Marx (1818–83). His stressupon
dialectical analysis – in which societyis treated as
an historically evolving andsystemically interrelated
whole – has had aprofound impact on political
science, economicsand sociology. This dialecticalmethod, which seeks to uncover the fullcontext
of historically specific social interactionsin any
given system, is used byMarx as a tool for
understanding classrelationships under capitalism –
and as ameans for altering such structures
fundamentally.For Marx, immanent critique of
capitalist society anticipates revolutionarychange.
Uniting theory and practice, Marxdeclared in his
‘Theses on Feuerbach’: ‘Thephilosophers have only
interpreted the worldin various ways; the point is to
change it’(Marx 1845). How society itself mightevolve and how one might change societyare,
therefore, questions of the utmostimportance in the
Marxian schema.

First and foremost, Marx’s corpus is a
structure of interpretive analysis that seeksto
explain the historical uniqueness ofcapitalism.
Deeply influenced by such classicalpolitical
economists as Adam Smithand David Ricardo, Marx
nonetheless criticizedtheir representation of the
capitalistmode of production and its ‘bourgeois’social relations as a given. He aimed tograsp
the historical origins of capitalism andits potential
future development towardscommunism. The classical
economists, inMarx’s view, had reified the
reciprocity ofmarket relations – the equal exchange
ofvalue for value – while masking the factthat, under capitalism, labour produces a
surplus value, upon which profits andexploitation are
built.

Despite his criticisms of classical politicaleconomy, Marx learned much from theScottish
historical school, which includedSmith, Adam
Ferguson, William Robertson,and John Millar – all of
whom mightbe considered early economic sociologists(Meek 1954). These thinkerspioneered amaterialist conception of history, whichfully
appreciated that category of socialphenomena known as
‘the unintendedconsequences of social action’.

For Marx, however, capitalism was‘unintended
consequences’ writ large. Heand his life-long
collaborator, FrederickEngels, viewed capitalism as
an outgrowthof feudalism. Their analysis of the
evolutionfrom feudalism to capitalism focused on aseries of class and structural differentiations
over time – the distinction of pastoral tribesfrom
the general masses, the separation ofmanufacture from
agriculture and of townfrom country, and the
emergence of a classof merchants whose central
function wasnot the production of use-values, but thefacilitation of exchange in a globally
expanding marketplace. These divisions ofclass and
geography and specializations offunction happen
spontaneously, as it were,‘behind the backs of the
producers,’ asMarx explains in Volume 1 of Capital.Further fragmentation between purchaseand
sale, social production and privateappropriation,
state and civil society weremanifestations of the
deep ‘contradictions’in capitalism,
which propelled the systemtowards ever-worsening
periodic crises andbusiness cycles.

Under capitalism, the central dualism
opens up between the proletarian andcapitalist
classes. It is this focus on class thatled Marx and
Engels ([1848]1968) to view‘[t]he history of all
hitherto existing society[as] the history of class
struggle’. ThoughMarx was not the first thinker to
propose atheory of class – Charles Comte, CharlesDunoyer, James Mill and others had offeredan
alternative classical liberal theory, whichcontinues
to exert influence on contemporarylibertarianism – he
was a pioneerin the use of a conflict model of socialsystems.

For Marx, the formation of various classesis a function of material conditions.
Nevertheless, Marx was not oblivious tothe political
aspects of class formation. In itsorigins, capitalism
is born of primitiveaccumulation, in which the
mercantiliststate – using outright force, political
privilegeand control over public debt – acceleratesthe accumulation of capital to crushregressive
feudal social formations. But it isthrough the
alienation of products fromlabourers, the actual
producers ofvalue,that
capitalism achieves a progressive andrevolutionary
economic advancement.Marx presents a social
stratification theoryof sorts, which centres on
ownership of themeans of production at the core of
classfragmentation and conflict. On this basis,Marx saw the propertied capitalist class as
fundamentally parasitic on the propertyless
proletariat, which constituted the vastmajority of
capitalist society. Only alteringmaterial conditions
could make radicalsocial change possible. The
priority accordedto material factors in history is
theessence of Marx’s historical materialism,which locates historical movement, ultimately,
in economic development.

In Marx’s view, these material factors
were tending toward communism. Thoughhe did not
provide a fully articulated blueprintfor such social
change, he saw theachievement of communism as an
emancipatorytwo-stage process. In the first stage,what V. I. Lenin (1973) later called thestage
of socialism, the proletariat takescontrol of the
means of production and thestate, which had been an
instrument in thehands of the capitalist class, and
uses theseinstitutions for the benefit of the
workers.This ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’
eventuallyleads to the abolition of class societyin the second stage, which marks the triumphof
communism. At this point, themarket has been fully
supplanted as theagency of circulation and the state
withersaway, enabling a democratized distributionof abundant goods in a post-scarcitysociety.

Whatever one’s views of Marx’s historicalprojections, there is much debate in the
literature on the nature of historical materialism,
especially Marx’s view of the relationshipbetween the
material or economic‘base’ and the ideological,
cultural andpolitical ‘superstructure’. For example,
JeffreyAlexander, in his comprehensive workon Theoretical Logic in Sociology, argues that,
especially in the crucial period from 1845to 1848,
Marx put forth a strict instrumentalistmodel of
technological determinism.For Alexander, Marx
banishes voluntarismfrom sociology. Marx’s division
betweenmaterial life and consciousness, or base andsuperstructure, entails a one-way causality,in
Alexander’s view, since the base fullydetermines
superstructural elements. Thisapproach denies any
autonomy to politicalforces and reduces human
consciousness toa pure epiphenomenon ofmaterial conditions,a ‘sociology’ of knowledge
thateliminates human agency from the socialprocess.

Alternative nondeterminist readings areoffered by such writers as Avineri (1968),
Giddens (1979), Ollman (1976) and Sherman(1995).
These writers emphasize thedialectical character of
Marx’s method as away of combating strict determinist
implications.In these readings, the base is notpurely ‘technological’ or ‘material’; it is
social, consisting of conscious, reasoning,purposeful
human beings who act underhistorically specific
conditions.

Ollman (1993) argues further that Marx,whose dialectics was influenced by Joseph
Dietzgen and G. W. F. Hegel, embraces adoctrine of
internal relations. Externallyrelated variables are
independent: neitherdepends on the other for its
existence ormeaning. Internally related variables arereciprocally dependent on each other. InMarx’s
conception of society, mutualimplications abound.
Each unit – eachstructure, institution, class, etc. –
is treatedas an expression of capitalism, even as thetotality of capitalism is comprised of the
various units. Because human beings cannotcognitively
digest the whole as a whole,the process of
abstraction is essential to theanalysis of any social
problem. Marx’ssociological imagination, therefore,
incorporatesa crucially important perspectivalelement. By varying his vantage points andhis
levels of generality, and by extendingeach unit of
his analysis spatially and temporally,tracing its
systemic relationships toother units and its dynamic
relationships –especially its class relationships –
acrosstime, Marx is able to achieve a more
comprehensivepicture of capitalism.

It can be said that Marx and Engels lendcredence to both the determinist and nondeterministreadings. For example, in ThePoverty of
Philosophy, Marx asserts that ‘[t]hewindmill gives
you society with the feudallord; the steam mill,
society with theindustrial capitalist’ (Marx
[1847]1963).And Engels (1940) argued for a series ofdialectical ‘laws’ – ‘the transformation of
quantity into quality’, ‘the interpenetrationof
opposites’, ‘the negation of thenegation’ – that, he
believed, were applicableequally to the natural and
socialworlds. This inspired a whole generation ofSoviet writers, including G. V. Plekhanov,who
adopted and popularized the doctrineof ‘dialectical
materialism’ as a UnifiedScience – an all-inclusive
model of explanation.Many contemporary Marxists havedistanced themselves from this ‘scientism’,
which, philosopher Roy Bhaskar (1993)argues, was
‘neither presupposed norentailed’ in Marx’s analysis
of capitalism.

Nevertheless, there is evidence that
bothMarx and Engels’ dialectical project was farmore flexible than any strict determinist
model. Engels, in a series of ‘revisionist’letters in
the 1890s (Marx and Engels1982), objected to the use
of the materialistconception of history as an
abstract formulaimposed externally on the objects of
study.And Marx maintained, in Volume 3 ofCapital, that one must always take intoaccount
the ‘innumerable different empiricalcircumstances,
natural environment,racial relations, external
historical influences,etc.’ which are responsible, in
anygiven society, for ‘infinite variations andgradations in appearance’. The scientificstudy
of society is immanent to its contextand must be
‘ascertained only by analysis ofthe empirically given
circumstances’ (Marx [1894]1967).

In the period following Marx’s death,
this scientific study of society became centralto the
discipline of sociology. As Bottomore(1983) suggests,
some of the earlysociologists, such as Ferdinand Tönnies,acknowledged their indebtedness to Marx,just
as others – for example, Max Weberand Emile Durkheim
– pursued theirsociological work ‘in critical
opposition toMarxism’. Still, there have been notableMarxist contributions to sociology by CarlGrünberg,
Karl Kautsky, FranzMehring
and Georges Sorel. And despite early communist
governments’ directives againstsociology as a
‘bourgeois’ discipline, sociologicalstudies were
published by Russianand Austro-Marxists, as well as
by ‘WesternMarxists’ and the critical theorists of
theFrankfurt School. While such writers asGeorg Lukács, Karl Korsch and AntonioGramsci developed the historicalmaterialismof the Marxist paradigm, others, suchas Louis
Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas,have combined that
paradigm with variousinsights from structuralism,
functionalismand systems theory.